# What is the worst smell you've been unfortunate enough to whiff? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 10, 2003, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918 "2003-04-10T23:16:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2003, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/81 "2003-04-12T04:29:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by pestie \* > \*\ ***Myron** , I came to this thread specifically to mention roadkill skunk. I haven’t smelled dead bodies or burnt flesh - I’m sure they’d be worse - but the worst thing I ever personally caught a whiff of was fresh roadkill skunk. A friend and I had the clever idea to throw it in a bag and drop it on the doorstep of someone we didn’t like but I quickly aborted that plan when I got within 10 feet of it and nearly puked my guts out. \*\* When roadkill skunk ripens, it gets worse. Unbelievable unless you’ve experienced it. ---
**Author:** ![VDarlin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e56c9b/32.png) [@VDarlin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VDarlin)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2003, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/82 "2003-04-12T04:33:32Z")
Thought of another one. Not nearly as bad as the two I posted about, above, but much further reaching, and kind of surprising, considering the source. A paper mill. When I first went to Charleston, to visit my SO, he told me about it, but I had a hard time believing that paper could really smell _that_ bad, boy was I wrong - what an awful smell, and it went on for a few miles, in all directions. Yuck! ~V ---
**Author:** ![shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shrew)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2003, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/83 "2003-04-12T17:01:38Z")
A woman came into the medical office in which I worked. She complained of an odour and pain during sex, both of which had been an increasing problem over a six-week time frame. During examination, the smell was so staggering that the doctor himself had to spray odour neutralizer several times before he could extract the _rancid piece of tampon_ that had somehow come unattached from the rest of the tampon and had remained in her body for six weeks. The memory of that smell still makes my nostrils twitch. The smell was so lingering that we cancelled all appointments for the rest of the day to air out the office. I kid you not. ---
**Author:** ![Zenster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/cdc98d/32.png) [@Zenster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zenster)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2003, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/84 "2003-04-12T17:31:55Z")
Pure semiconductor grade anhydrous ammonia. Feels like it’s stripping paint off the walls of your sinus cavities. Even a very small leak is rather easily detected. ---
**Author:** ![Zenster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/cdc98d/32.png) [@Zenster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zenster)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2003, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/85 "2003-04-12T17:37:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by elelle \* > **… nasal patina …** Band name! ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2003, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/86 "2003-04-12T17:38:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by krisolov \* > \*\*well, I had the pleasure of doing a field audit for the local natural gas company. One of the places we visited was the “scent shed”. This contained a large tank of the agent that provides the odor for natural gas (mercaptan?). It literally knocked me backwards and I could not enter the shed. > \*\* A mall in Springfield Massachusetts once had to be evacuated because a fired ex-employee of the gas company left an opened canister of this agent on the steps. It is very, very bad. ---
**Author:** ![Orange\_Skinner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3be4f8/32.png) [@Orange\_Skinner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orange_Skinner)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2003, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/87 "2003-04-12T21:21:15Z")
A friend of mine, Adam, has some rather large, very cheap earrings, one in each ear. I’d imagine he’s not the biggest on the ear-hygiene front. At any rate, once a month or so, he’ll pop the crusty things out (yeah, crusty…each one has a thin layer of flaky, whitish ear-pus that forms a complete circle of either earring). He’ll look at them, sniff them, make a repelent face, proclaim them to possess the Worst Smell Ever…then offer them around. Last month, I took him up. It was a dead, infected cheese smell the like of which I cannot describe, one of those smells that you taste, and the taste coats the back of your throat, and puts you in mind of gangrene, feet, and then goats…the simulated taste version of the \*Wonkatainia \*scene in _Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory_, where Violet Bourigaurd says “what is this, a freak out?” Positively foul. Anyway, that’s the worst I’ve smelled. And, it gets worse: he offered to put the earrings–both earrings–in his mouth for a full minute next month when it’s time for their, monthly cleansing, for the low, low, low price of $1.00 an earring. This includes licking the ear-pus film away, and swallowing. So far, I haven’t had the courage to take him up. ---
**Author:** ![alibey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@alibey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alibey)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/88 "2003-04-13T02:16:59Z")
Izmir bay (it is on the Ageian cost of Turkey) on the Mitipasha district in August A sesspool with industrial waste. One time when a Navy ship came into port, a drunken sailor fell into the bay, he was quickly pulled out, scrubbed and washed down, shot full of antibiotics and flown straight to Germany. It is defenatly vomit inducing. ---
**Author:** ![Wonko\_The\_Sane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/258eb7/32.png) [@Wonko\_The\_Sane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wonko_The_Sane)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/89 "2003-04-13T02:33:24Z")
At work we have DMSO (Di-MethylSulfOxide), and it gets nastier after it’s used. I don’t know what happens to it, but it’s nastier. Also, every so often someone will microwave some kind of asian food in the microwave for lunch. I’ve heard that whatever it was was actually food, but the whole area smelled like old, rancid sewage. Ecch!! This woman at work wears Too Much Perfume, and when she walks by, she actually makes a contrail behind her that has been known to actually make me half-snort, half-gag. ---
**Author:** ![MajorTom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@MajorTom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MajorTom)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/90 "2003-04-13T04:12:59Z")
If you fish, rember not to leave the worms in the glove box for more than 4 days in the summer. Don’t know about 3 days, 4 was bad enough. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/91 "2003-04-13T04:51:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Zenster \* > \*\*Pure semiconductor grade anhydrous ammonia. Feels like it’s stripping paint off the walls of your sinus cavities. Even a very small leak is rather easily detected. \*\* Ahhh… Memories of my high school job at the drafting shop. The boss gave me the dubious honor of keeping the blueprint machine filled up. I’d take the ammonia reservoir with me out into the parking lot and fill it there, at arm’s length, and I still had to hold my breath. ---
**Author:** ![Thaumaturge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/858c86/32.png) [@Thaumaturge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thaumaturge)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/92 "2003-04-13T05:29:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Guinastasia \* > \*\*I hope the guy who did that got fired. What a dumbass! \*\* Nope. The overboss never found out what had happened, since my boss took it out on a day he wasn’t there (though he suspected, no one else really would have done something like that). I think he had honestly meant to put it there for only a day or two, but forgot about it. He was a good guy, just liked to play pranks. When he left, we tied him up, put a wig and make-up on him, painted his nails green, and sprayed him with sea-dye. And who set up this little going away party for him? The guy who had the dead rat in his office. So things worked out in the end. ---
**Author:** ![Lostboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Lostboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lostboy)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/93 "2003-04-13T16:14:04Z")
My dad rents the house that used to belong to his parents. Earlier this year the guy that had rented it for the last couple of years moved out. I was helping my parents clean up the mess he left(I don’t think he had vaccumed for at least a year). In the basement we found one of those plastic 30 gallon garbage cans with a cover on it. It was very heavy-we could drag it, but with my dad’s back lifting it was out of the question. We opened the cover. We didn’t leave the cover off long enough to identify the slurry inside. Later we found out from his former girlfriend that he had tried to make saurkraut 2 years ago, and when it didn’t turn out he just dumped it out. Since it was too heavy for him he just left it there. We were left to dispose roughly 200 pounds of well aged saurkraut. The field behind their house where we ended up dumping it smelled awful the entire day ---
**Author:** ![Ruffian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/71e660/32.png) [@Ruffian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruffian)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/94 "2003-04-13T16:37:42Z")
I’ve had to deal with my cat’s anal glands–something I long had never heard of, and long to have never heard of–on a regular basis. The stench is unbelievable, but once you learn to express them yourself (don’t ask, but fortunately no actual contact with actual cat butt is necessary) and you aim for the bushes, the smell is avoidable. Now, worst thing I’ve smelled comes in the **dead thing** category. Several years ago, I had a baby pet ball python named Bathsheba. Poor Sheba was a wild-caught hatchling, I later learned, infested with some unpleasant internal parasites. Before she stopped eating altogether, she managed to ingest a prekilled adult mouse. Hooray, I’m thinking…she ate! Ultimate test of snake health. A few _days_ later, I was _AWAKENED_ by the most unholy stench I’d ever been exposed to. Seriously, I’m a sound sleeper, but this smell did me in. I follow my nose and find poor Sheba had regurgitated one marinated mouse. Holy hell, it was unbelievable…the mix of decay, stomach acids, parasitic infestation…feeehhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I held my breath as I used soon-tossed kitchen utensils to scoop out the liquified black mouse-shaped thing and triple ziploc bagged it. Orginally, I put it in a trash can in my bathroom, but even triple bagged and rooms away, I could smell it, so I ended up taking it to the outside trash bin at 3:00am. Yuck-o! ---
**Author:** ![Zenster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/cdc98d/32.png) [@Zenster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zenster)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/95 "2003-04-13T21:28:55Z")
While not the _worst_ smell I’ve encountered, I’d have to put this one near the top of the good old Christmas list. _Cho Dofu_ It is some sort of aged or marinated _tofu_ they served in Taiwan. I’m sure it is viewed as a delicacy by many Asians. To me it smelled like nothing so much as a ripe and entirely full diaper. Adventurous with food as I might be, I just could not bring myself to sample it. The _cho dofu_, not the diaper! ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/96 "2003-04-13T21:55:43Z")
Bear bait. This is the foulest, most likely to produce projectile vomiting smell anyone would ever have the misfortune of “experiencing”. It generally consists of a base of bacon grease and other foods left to decay in an airtight container and then placed at various “bait stations” out in the woods. The older it gets, the more dead leaves and dirt and foulness it collects. Some people once brought a bucket of it to our environmental company (they thought it was some sort of toxic chemical) to sample. Most disgusting substance ever. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/97 "2003-04-13T22:05:08Z")
Gas gangrene. The patient was a diabetic who neglected himself terribly. By the time he came in, his foot was mostly a decaying mass of gangrenous flesh liquifying in a slipper. The smell was horrific. And I’m a guy who has had no trouble lancing an anaerobic rectal abscess, expressing the purulent material, then going right out to lunch without missing a beat. But that gangrene is over the top. ---
**Author:** ![preacherswife](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@preacherswife](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/preacherswife)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/98 "2003-04-13T22:44:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Qadgop the Mercotan \* > \*\* And I’m a guy who has had no trouble lancing an anaerobic rectal abscess, expressing the purulent material, then going right out to lunch without missing a beat. \*\* \*\*[COLOR=limegreen][/UUURRRRRPPPPPCOLOR] \*\* ---
**Author:** ![preacherswife](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@preacherswife](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/preacherswife)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/99 "2003-04-13T22:46:45Z")
STUPID CODES!!! **uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppppppppppppppp** My god that made my stomach turn… ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2003, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918/100 "2003-04-14T00:25:32Z")
I’ve been relatively blessed - the most _nauséabonde_ odour I’ve ever had the mischance to come across is a decaying cucumber in the back of the fridge. Oh, and whatever it is the cats were doing last year. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-smell-youve-been-unfortunate-enough-to-whiff/167918.md?page=6)